Christianity and the church
Christianity and the church in Ireland
This book explores the Skelligs, Ireland’s most dramatic and beautiful Atlantic islands, and focuses particularly on Skellig Michael, a famous UNESCO World Heritage Site. It considers why the construction of a remarkable monastic site near the peak of this island over a thousand years ago stands as one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of Christianity.
The Book of the Skelligs combines different approaches to deepening our understanding of the islands, combining the perspectives of history, archaeology, cultural geography, oral tradition, literature and natural science. It interprets distinctive features, both physical and human, that shape the unique character of these islands while also exploring their geology, marine and terrestrial life as well as the historical background and cultural setting of Skellig Michael’s monastic remains.
It also considers the impact of the Vikings, and the construction of lighthouses a millennium later. Drawing on appropriate disciplines, the book reveals how a unique cultural landscape was generated by human activities over long periods of time. The editors and contributors have incorporated a wide range of illustrative material including maps, paintings, and photographs throughout the book, many of which have not been published before. It comprises over forty individual chapters and case studies in which the work of academics and independent scholars is combined with that of poets and artists to provide a wide range of perspectives on Skelligs’ distinctive character – both natural and human – during different periods. The aim of the editors is to produce a well-informed, accessible, highly readable, and generously illustrated volume that succeeds in conveying a true sense of the cultural richness and complexity of these remarkable islands. The blend of text and images is an important part of the book, making it both suitable for the general reader and a wide range of teaching programmes.
This book is the first to explore the archaeology of female monasticism in medieval Ireland, primarily from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Nuns are known from history, but this book considers their archaeology and upstanding architecture through perspectives such as gender and landscape. It discusses the archaeological remains associated with female monasticism in Ireland as it is currently understood and offers insights into how these religious communities might have lived and interacted with their local communities.
It briefly includes female religious of the early medieval period, other female religious, such as anchorites, while providing a wider European monastic context. While some nunneries used what is considered a typical monastic layout—of a church and other buildings arranged around a central area—this research has found that in many cases a nunnery was a small church with attached accommodation, or a separate dwelling; particularly when nuns lived in towns.
Medieval women became nuns for various reasons and followed a daily routine called the divine office, with occasions, like saints’ feast days, celebrated in special ways. It is sometimes suggested that all nuns were locked away, but history and archaeology show that they had many connections with the world outside. Nunneries had to maintain these ties in order to function and stay relevant, so the local community and benefactors would continue to support the nunnery as their church, and for some, their place of burial.A study of the lives and legacy of Picts and Britons in the Irish Church, looking at their impact on early medieval Irish society and how this impact came to be perceived in later centuries.
Between the fifth and ninth centuries AD, the peoples of Britain, Ireland, and their surrounding islands were constantly interacting — sharing cultures and ideas that shaped and reshaped their communities and the way they lived. The influence of religious figures from Ireland on the development of the Church in Britain was profound, and the fame of monasteries such as Iona, which they established, remains to this day. Yet with the exception of St Patrick, far less attention has been paid to the role of the Britons and Picts who travelled west into Ireland, despite their equally significant impact.
This book aims to redress the balance by offering a detailed exploration of the evidence for British and Pictish men and women in the early medieval Irish Church, and asking what we can piece together of their lives from the often fragmentary sources. It also considers the ways in which writers of later ages viewed these migrants, and examines how the shaping of the ‘migration narrative’ throughout the centuries had a major effect on the way that the earliest centuries of the church came to be viewed in later years in both Scotland and Ireland. In doing so, this volume offers important new insights into our understanding of the relationships between Britain and Ireland in this period.
This article investigates two comparable crises of leadership in Gaelic Christendom which occurred around the same time, in 1120–1121; these culminated in failed episcopal appointments for St. Andrews and Dublin. The article is based on accounts from Scotland and Ireland which shed light on the developments in both countries and on Historia nouorum in Anglia ‘History of recent events in England’ by Eadmer, who was biographer and confidant of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 until his death in 1109. Eadmer was the principal contemporary first-hand witness to events in this period, but his evidence is somewhat problematic. There are few substantial comparative discussions of Scottish and Irish ecclesiastical developments in the 1120s; in addition, the work of Eadmer needs fuller consideration regarding Canterbury's relationships with Gaelic churches. Eadmer's depiction of the St. Andrews situation is especially significant because he himself was the bishop-elect. I assess how these crises arose and how they caused the relationships between Gaelic churches and Canterbury to become highly strained. I aim to show that leaders in Scotland and Ireland undertook the pursuit of ecclesiastical independence in very different ways and that both failed appointments, though eventually prompting a degree of independence, resulted in short-term stagnation.
This book opens up discussion on the liturgical music of medieval Ireland by approaching it from a multidisciplinary, European perspective. In so doing, it challenges received notions of an idiosyncratic ‘Celtic Rite’, and of the prevailing view that no manuscripts with music notation have survived from the medieval Irish Church. This is due largely to a preoccupation by earlier scholars with pre-Norman Gaelic culture, to the neglect of wider networks of engagement between Ireland, Britain, and continental Europe. In adopting a more inclusive approach, a different view emerges which demonstrates the diversity and international connectedness of Irish ecclesiastical culture throughout the long Middle Ages, in both musico-liturgical and other respects.
The contributors represent a variety of specialisms, including musicology, liturgiology, palaeography, hagiology, theology, church history, Celtic studies, French studies, and Latin. From this rich range of perspectives they investigate the evidence for Irish musical and liturgical practices from the earliest surviving sources with chant texts to later manuscripts with music notation, as well as exploring the far-reaching cultural impact of the Irish church in medieval Europe through case studies of liturgical offices in honour of Irish saints, and of saints traditionally associated with Ireland in different parts of Europe.Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Relics and the late antique World -- Chapter 2. Origins and early cult in Ireland -- Chapter 3. Translatio -- Chapter 4. Leachta, sepulcri, and the role of relics in church consecration -- Chapter 5. The formal use of relics in early Ireland -- Chapter 6. Relics and identity — Power and control in early medieval Ireland -- Conclusions -- Appendix. Terminology of the cult of relics in early medieval Ireland -- Bibliography -- Index.
In mid November 1064, what was perhaps the most important pre-Crusade pilgrimage to Jerusalem left Bavaria under the leadership of Günther, bishop of Bamberg. The number of pilgrims, all unarmed, is stated as some seven thousand in the least incredible source text. The leading ecclesiastics came from all over the northern half of the Empire, from Utrecht to Regensburg. A substantial contingent hailed from the province of Mainz, led by Archbishop Siegfried. Only some two thousand are said to have returned the following year. Our earliest source is the chronicle kept at Mainz by the Gaelic inclusus, Moelbrigte / Marianus Scottus (d. 1082/3), who had lived at Mainz since 1069 and was certainly writing his chronicle by 1073/4.
Online version published in 2009. Contents: Prologue: Ireland's English reformation -- Raising up the Church of Ireland: John Bramhall and the beginnings of reconstruction, 1633-1635 -- English codes and confession for Ireland, 1633-1636 -- The bishops in the ascendant, 1635-1640 -- Enforcing the new order, 1635-1640 -- The downfall of reconstruction, 1640-1641 -- Conclusion: reconstruction as reformation.
